Role-specific Project Manager Interview Questions & Answers:

It is the responsibility of the project manager to ensure that the team's output meets the performance requirements stated in the project definition and delivers the goals of the project.

Why a team member would be a non productive? Either he is not up to that level of his work means his skill set is weak. So the answer is coaching/mentoring. Ask Tech Lead to communicate with him frequently & face to face. Don't wait for the task to complete go to his seat, talk friendly, ask indirectly what he is doing and give your suggestions. Don't point him forward some good article to whole team. Give your feedback early to the member. Indirectly share your experience about the problems he is facing. Realize him that he the important valuable member of the project team and you have lot of expectations from him.

Second thing is , some team members are careless or your environment is not productive. The solution is, explain clearly what is expected from the team. Don't wait for status report, communicate frequently with team and remind their goals step by step goals.
Appreciate the members who are doing good work. Involvement is the key to handle non productive members. Don't assign them work through mail. First meet with team, explain the goals, divide the goals into parts & Let the team members pick tasks of their own choice. That will make them more responsible for their task. I think in this way you can change their professional attitude.

First of all it should satisfy all the repurpose of itself and requirements of client. A successful project should be one that meets its cost, schedule and quality goals within engineering tolerances and without padding its schedule or budget. Project Manager should balance between all objectives so that a high-quality product can be delivered according to an efficient schedule at moderate cost.

Projects that don't set up processes to eliminate defects in early stages fall into extended test-debug-re-implement test cycles that seem interminable. So many defects are reported by testing that by the end of the project, the "change control board" or "feature team" may be meeting as often as every day to prioritize defect corrections. Because of the vast number of defects, the software has to be released with many known (albeit low priority) defects. In the worst case, the software might never reach a level of quality high enough for it to be released. That's why software testing is important from day one.

Project Planning defines in detail the project activities and the product that will be produced, and describes how the project activities will be accomplished. Project Planning defines all major tasks, estimates the time and resources necessary to complete them, and provides a framework for management review and control.

Project Planning activities include defining and documenting the following:

► Work to be performed,
► Project goals,
► Estimates for planning, tracking, executing, and controlling the project,
► Commitments of the affected groups, and
► Project alternatives, assumptions, and constraints

Planning is a process that includes activities to estimate the size of the project, the scope of the effort, and the resources required to complete the project, as well as steps to produce a project schedule, identify, assess and manage risks, and negotiate commitments. Several iterations of the planning process may be performed before the Project Plan is completed.

The success of any product involves meeting expectations-those of the ultimate customer, those of management stakeholders, and those of the project team itself. While delivering something useful to the customer remains paramount, keeping all the participants informed and involved is critical to success.

If we want products that deliver outstanding customer value, then we must have a customer-developer partnership, one with responsibilities and accountability on both sides (and similar relationships with key suppliers). Agile teams constantly seek customer involvement and are always asking the question, "Is what we are doing useful to you in meeting your business goals?"

Customers need working product not documentation. Project managers need to relieve the project team from as much compliance work as possible, even if that means taking on the tasks themselves. So that the development team can concentrate on the real work.

Agile frameworks do need minimal documentation and a mechanism to convey knowledge about project success and failure to others in the organization. The answer isn't eliminating either documentation or process, but approaching both from a simplified, lean, barely sufficient, just-enough perspective.

To get the customer feedback early. Iterations allow you to manage risk sooner-you do not have to build the whole product to find out if you can meet a particular specification.

Another benefit of continuous feature delivery is that for some products, software being a good example, incremental releases can provide early benefits. Rather than wait 12 or 18 months for new software features, incremental delivery can provide quarterly or even more frequent ones. Incremental releases can favorably alter ROI calculations because they allow product managers to address opportunities that would be lost in 18 months. However, even though some products can be developed iteratively using simulations or prototypes, they are very difficult to release incrementally. As the battle over Web browsers showed in the late 1990s, customers often can't assimilate new product releases every three to four months.

I am telling you few ideas in my mind that as a project manager how you can add value to project & real customer.

Feel the real need of customers. Don't act as a sales person. Work as consultant. Which can add much more value to them and hence people will trust you and that trust will help you to grow your business.

Prepare a presentation of their relevance in simple way and with few words. Provide the satisfied references.

Another concern: As a project manager How to justify the time & human resource cost to other persons with different skills like Sales Manager? So Idea is divide all tasks in micro tasks and try to explain all these in detail. Try that he becomes a part of the team and able to realize the facts.

Dropping price doesn't make any sense. Because if you do it, you have to do it again & again to sell your product. Instead of that increase your product quality.

Yes This is a common Project management interview Question asked to every project manager.

Generally project manager use Basecamp. Another software is activecollab. This is can be installed on your own server.

These tools provide ability to set up unlimited numbers of projects, assign members to the projects, set tasks, set milestones, add pages, add tickets, upload documents to the project, have discussions within the project and set numerous access levels for management, staff and clients.

To judge a technical ability of programmer ask about his past technical work, ask some general tech questions and If you can, try to give him/her a little challenge where he/she can prove some of the skills he/she have enumerated on his/her CV and that he/she will need for the job. In a further interview you may ask him/her how he/she solved some problems. If it is the case, ask him/her how he/she did certain aspects of items listed in his/her portfolio.

By telling your team what to do, you at some level are telling them that what they've done has not been successful. That's probably not what you mean. However, tell them why you want something, and ask for their help, and the underlying message is “you've done well in the past, so here's something new.” Even when you put rules in place (governance rules, if you will), you can still educate as to the “why” and get more acceptance than you would otherwise. And, if you have the opportunity to get input, and adjust your rules with feedback, even better. Much better.

Provide positive Feedback First
Make sure that you first focus on achievements - just the good news. One of the factors that make working together so difficult is our habit of focusing on issues and problems to the exclusion of achievements and successes. In such an environment people feel undervalued and unmotivated and a feeling of Why bother? Shapes the culture.

Review Failures
Next take time to review failures, asking the team to make a full list of disappointments. Let them know that this exercise has nothing to do with pointing fingers and everything to do with creating a realistic picture of the current status of the team and the business.

Take the Lessons
Finally ask each team member to consider what can be learned from what happened. Discuss the potential lessons and align on the top three guidelines that would make the most difference to your success. Keep these alive throughout the year by regular review and public display with news of the difference the lessons are making to performance.

Provide a comprehensive answer remembering to explain the project as you would to a client and not to somebody who has been involved in the project.

The more complex a project the more formal processes and techniques are needed to effectively manage the work. Explain the purpose, value and implementation of the most critical aspects of the project including managing the project work plan, the project schedule, the project risks, the project issues and closing the project.

Be enthusiastic about your accomplishments and specify how your experience will benefit the company. Point out where you made a difference on the project in terms of expenditure, quality, efficiency, customer satisfaction and business and organizational success.

Focus on your ability to delegate in a fair and practical way, how you clearly defined project roles and responsibilities, kept personality clashes and conflict to a minimum and monitored and fed back to the project team. Outline your management style and why it worked.

It is very important to give a strength that compensates for your weakness. Make your weakness into a positive. “I consider myself a 'big picture' person. I sometimes skip the small details. For this reason, I always have someone on my team that is very detail oriented.” Another good answer: “Sometimes, I get so excited and caught up in my work that I forget that my family life should be my number one priority.”

“I find that I work better under pressure, and I enjoy working in an environment that is challenging.” “I am the type of person that diffuses stress. I am used to working in a demanding environment with deadlines, and enjoy the challenges.”

Regardless of the reason, do not bad mouth your current employer. Negativism will always hurt you. Good answers include: “There is no room for growth at my current employer. I am looking for a company with long term growth opportunities”. “Due to a company restructuring, my entire department is relocating to Florida. I was give the option of moving, but do not wish to relocate”. “My current company is not doing well, and has been laying off employees. There is no job security there, and more layoffs are expected”.

No job is without its disappointments. The disappointments can be anything, from an employee who left for personal reasons or the project that you did not bag because of the financials involved.
Make sure that you provide a quick and factual answer for this question.

These and other questions are randomly asked for the interview of the post of a project manager.
Make sure that you read about the job description well before you opt for a project manager interview.

Apart from the portfolio, everyone has some project or aspect of their jobs that they hold close to their heart. This is the time to inform the interviewer about what your favorite project was and why. Of course, you have to make sure that you do not go on a ramble and genuinely discuss some of your favorite projects.

A project manager has to take into consideration several disagreements. They can be between employees, between the superior and the employees, or even the client and the employees. If you reply that you have never had any disagreements, the interviewer will wonder whether you were really a project manager for your skills or simply because you are a people pleaser.
Make sure that you come up with at least one incident where employees and superiors had differences in thought and you were instrumental in changing the scenario.

As an experienced professional, you are bound to have a portfolio, and this is the right time to share such a portfolio with the interviewer. Make sure that the portfolio you share is authentic and has all the work that you have done. Your previous portfolio will decide whether the interviewer will be interested you or not.

Rarely is an inexperienced person taken in as a project manager. Any project manager would have at least two or three years of experience either as an employee or as a project manager. Therefore, this is one of the basic questions asked. Make sure that you give a brief and concise answer to this question, without going too much into the details. Also, make sure that everything you say as an answer to this question is factual and true.

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